ERA19LA173 · Hughes 269B
Hughes 269B · Accident: ground resonance during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA173
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Hughes 269B
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 269
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N9422F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1965)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Ground resonance
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While hovering, the pilot attempted to set the helicopter down. During the transition from hover to landing, the pilot noticed a vibration in the helicopter. He decided to “pull more power” in an attempt to regain a hover condition. When power was applied, the helicopter began to shake violently. He then “rolled the power off and secured the landing.” The helicopter sustained substantial damage.
A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that the four oleo landing struts were sufficiently extended; however, damage to the helicopter precluded measurement of the struts in the properly loaded condition. No maintenance was performed on the struts and no annotations about their condition were recorded during the most recent annual inspection.
Although the pilot did not initially report any anomalies with the engine, he subsequently stated that the engine had “sputtered” during the hover and later reported that he had noticed a vibration and loss of power during the hover. He advised that he was a student helicopter pilot and was not completely familiar with the types of vibrations that were “normal” versus those that were not, and he had discussed this with his instructor on previous flights. The examination of the engine revealed no evidence of pre-accident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
The investigation was unable to determine if the ground resonance was caused by improper maintenance of the oleo landing gear struts, the pilot’s improper landing technique, or a combination of both.
Probable cause
Ground resonance during landing for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA173
- Event ID
- 20190520X83913
- Case number
- ERA19LA173
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f5a99b2124173961ee95f6f846f161e3b36a7394d2e807105ba43c1e179a5cfc; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:01:51.794Z.